Technology companies willingly provided information to U.S. government agencies to help the Obama administration snoop on reporters from the Associated Press (AP) and Fox news in order to ostensibly crack down on leaks that pose a “threat” to national security.

"Every president wants to control the message, but this administration has taken things to a different level," Kathleen McClellan, a lawyer for the Government Accountability Project, a whistle-blower support organization, told the Los Angeles Times. "They have indicted a record number of people under the Espionage Act, and they have been very willing to go after journalists."

The AP published a report in May 2012 that a person in Yemen was planning to launch a suicide attack on a U.S. bound plane using an underwear bomb. The report suggested that the Obama administration had misled or lied to the public about the existence of the plot.

The U.S. Department of Justice asked Ronald Machen Jr., the U.S. attorney in Washington, to investigate the matter. A subpoena was issued to Verizon (and possibly others) for 21 phone lines in five AP offices (including one that has been shut down six years ago, according to David Schulz, AP’s chief lawyer. Verizon turned over the data “without any attempt to obtain permission to tell them so the reporters could ask a court to quash the subpoena.”

Federal officials later claimed that it has the legal authority to ask for the records. But media organizations say that the request sets a dangerous precedent.

Activists say that the company should not have complied with the government as no legitimate warrant was provided. “It shows you just how crazy the technology is, and (supports) all the more the need to explain to the court what they are doing,” Hanni Fakhoury, an EFF staff attorney, told Wired magazine. “This is more than just (saying to Verizon) give us some records that you have sitting on your server. This is reconfiguring and changing the characteristics of the (suspect's) property, without informing the judge what’s going on.”

Google Cooperation

Google has also just been revealed to have turned over data on James Rosen (whose name is almost identical to the New York Times reporter) of Fox news about his emails with Stephen Jin-Woo Kim, a former State Department contractor, about North Korea’s nuclear program in June 2009.

Kim’s lawyers disagree. “To begin, it is not now – nor has it ever been – a crime to talk to the media,” says Abbe Lowell on a support website. “Second, the subject matter of the news article in question in this case was hardly remarkable — reporting on what a foreign country would do or not do when that was already in the public and something that country had done before and something that everyone knew the foreign country would do. The government leaks far more sensitive information to the media every day as part of its normal business.”

“The Rosen case follows other signs that the administration has gone overboard in its zeal to find and muzzle insiders,” wrote the New York Times in an editorial. “Obama administration officials often talk about the balance between protecting secrets and protecting the constitutional rights of a free press. Accusing a reporter of being a “co-conspirator,” on top of other zealous and secretive investigations, shows a heavy tilt toward secrecy and insufficient concern about a free press.

“When you use the Internet, you entrust your conversations, thoughts, experiences, locations, photos, and more to companies like Google, AT&T and Facebook,” wrote the authors. “But what do these companies do when the government demands your private information? Do they stand with you? Do they let you know what’s going on?”

Chris Soghoian of the American Civil Liberties Union told the Journal that all this information could easily end up in the hands of federal investigators. "It's the collection that's the scary part, not the business use,” he said.